I would still really like to find a used digital camera to replace the one that was stolen from by robbery. I like to see anyone happens to have one laying around he/she would not mind donating to the hospital, The camera is one of things that you must have for document documentations and project updates I will be appreciate to see one of you give me a surprise for have a camera emailed to the hospital,
I appreciate
looking forward.
thanks
Bram

Hi All
Just to inform you that i was informed with steve that he has uploaded the new revision to the website i hope now the website is done.
I like both of you to go through again and see if we have still have some section that you need to work on so that we need to close this task soon as posible to work to other tasks.
Jennifer did you receive the names of the books that doctors needed if not i will will sent it to you again and if yes please can you post it here.
warmest regard
Bram

Hi Bramuel

That is good news! I hope to have a look over the next few days.

Mary

I welcomes friends on nabuur from x-tams and i wish them fruitful 2009 and this is to inform you that hope alive Uganda has got a link www.givemeaning.com/project/hopealive

Happy New Year to everyone!

Bramuel and I spoke briefly this morning and I wanted to update everyone on a few things:

1. NHIF

Arrow-Web Hospital just completed it's 3rd month under NHIF accreditation. Bramuel is working on the report now regarding showing the reimbursement level for December 2008. He will get me that information as soon as it's compiled.

2. African Diaspora Medical Project

We have still heard nothing back regarding the proposal that was submitted.

3. Kitchen Table Proposal

We were able to gather the requested documents and sent them off to Mary who kindly mailed them from the UK. If you recall, they were not able to accept the proposal originally submitted by email and asked for a paper copy along with an estimated cost list from the supplier of the equipment requested. This was mailed a few days ago, so hopefully we will hear back from them soon.

4. Digital Camera

The digital camera that Debbie donated has arrived in Kenya. Bramuel hopes to pick it up tomorrow at the post office, so look forward to lots of new picture updates from the hospital.

5. Hospital brochure

I've asked Grace Chen, who is a volunteer here at Nabuur if she would be willing to redesign the Arrow-Kenya brochure (there's a link to the original one in that task thread posted by Mary). I heard from Grace today and she has kindly agreed to help us out. She's done excellent work in the Khandbari village so I am very confident that she will produce a brochure of similar quality for us. I look forward to working with her to get that completed.

6. Website Revisions

For the most part, the Arrow-Web Hospital website is in pretty good shape. There were still some final edits that were missed in the last round of revision. Mary has summarized these, but I think Bramuel is having a hard time going through it and easily identifying what still needs to be done. If someone would be willing to take that document and simplify it into a list of only the things that were missed and take out the things that were completed, I think it would be easier for him to work with. It costs the hospital money each time they have to edit the site, so it's important that next time they do it, they are able to easily see what needs done to make sure they don't miss anything. Let me know if you're willing to take that on. The document is posted in the thread about website edits.

7. Reference books

We still need a list of books to work with. I've posted a reminder to Bramuel about this today, so I'm certain that he will work on getting that together as soon as he can.

8. Bicycles

We are still looking for 1-2 people willing to work on writing up a proposal for 5 bicycles for the community health team. Mary and I have located multiple resources we can contact about this for the Masaka village, so it is a matter of going through those sites and learning more about what type of information they need to get the proposals written. If anyone is interested in working on this project, please let me know and Bramuel or myself can get you whatever information you might need.

9. Laptop

Bramuel has asked if anyone might have a laptop that they would be willing to donate to the hospital. Bramuel has to travel frequently and would like to be able to stay connected for better communication.

10. Community Health Education

Bramuel and I spent some time discussing Barb's idea about students creating health information posters or other items that could be used to help teach on health topics. We talked about possibly partnering with the Matopeni school again to do some teaching with the students there.

Bramuel also told me that they are already actively working with local orphans and homeless in a similar way-which I knew nothing about before today, but was very excited to learn about! Unfortunately, I lost my chat log with all of the details, so I will try my best to recall our discussion from memory. Each year, the hospital accepts applications for a chance to train with the doctors. They offer a year long program that includes a uniform and books from local medical schools as well as food for the students. It costs them about $15/mo. per student, so they are only able to accept 3 students per year. This year, they have 40 applications so far and the deadline date for applying to the program is in February. They would like to be able to expand this program and offer it to more people. After the year of training is up, Arrow-Kenya works to help the students find jobs in the community or they can become voluntary counselors for HIV/AIDS related issues.

If anyone has any thoughts or ideas on how we might be able to help them develop this program and make it locally sustainable, we would love to hear your thoughts.

Again, let me know if you would be interested in helping with any of the items I've outlined above.

Kind regards-

Jennifer

Since I lost my chat log this morning, I asked Bramuel to email me again the details of the training program to make sure I didn't forget anything we had discussed when I posted about it. I just got his email so here's some of the details he sent me:

The training program for orphans was started 2-years ago. Bramuel presented this idea to the hospital board members and they sat together to try and determine an appropriate budget to start the program. They found that they would not be able to realistically manage it if they took too many students, so they decided to start with 3 with the requirement that the student must be orphaned-without both parents.

In 2007, they began recruiting for this program and were able to find 3 students, who graduated and are now working in local hospitals at Patient Assistants. In 2008, they recruited another 3 students. These students will finish their studies on January 30, 2009.

Through this experience, they have found that the cost per student is $15/mo. This covers their education materials, breakfast and lunch. In 2009, they were hoping to have enough funds to recruit 10 students, but unfortunately they do not have enough money to support that. They are presently accepting applications for their new class and already have 40 applicants, so there is much interest in the local community. They will only be able to accept 3 students again this year.

The hospital would love to make this a more sustainable program and are interested in obtaining ideas on how to do that. They are looking for organizations that may be able to provide funding, or sponsors willing to donate $15/mo. for 1-year so that they could then increase the number of students.

After finishing the course, they provide follow-up with them until they gain FT employment.

Jennifer

Hi Jennifer

I will produce a list of the things that still need doing to the website sometime over the next few days.

I assume there is no way for Bramuel to edit the site himself, that he has to get the web developer to do it for him?

Mary

Thank you Mary! You're the best! :)

Jennifer

Hi Jennifer

That training programme sounds like a great idea!

Does it (or could it) lead to a recognised qualification for the students? This may make it easier for them to get jobs afterwards.

Would it be possible to accept one or two paying students too, to help to cover costs of those who cannot afford to pay?

What do the students contribute in return for the training? They may not be able to afford to pay any sort of fees, but they may be able to do some practical things which could help to reduce other costs for the hospital.

Also, how about them agreeing that, once they get employment, they pay a certain amount back to the hospital over time? This would not help initially but would mean that in future years, there was money to cover training more people.

Mary

Hi everyone-

I hope that you are all enjoying the weekend. I have been snowed in!

I had the opportunity to talk with Bramuel this morning and wanted to give you all a brief update regarding the major events of the past week:

1. Camera-as I informed you all during my last update, Debbie's donated camera arrived in Kenya. When Bramuel went to pick it up on Monday, he was told he would have to pay $129 USD to get it. The Kenya Revenue Authority had marked it as an import and valued it at over $500 USD. Bramuel went to the Director of the NGO Council who sent a letter to the Kenya Revenue Authority explaining that this was a charitable donation. He was then able to get the camera on Tuesday at no cost.

Bramuel told the Director of the NGO Council that any item donated to the hospital will need to be clearly marked as a donation. This way the workers at the Kenya Revenue Authority do not mark it as an import. Also, if and where possible, a receipt of purchase or estimated value of the item should be included so that they do not over-estimate the actual cost. We wanted to post this information because we didn't anticipate these issues, but it's good for us all to keep in mind for future reference.

Again, we wish to express many thanks to Debbie for her kind donation. It's great to be able to see pictures of the progress at the hospital again!

2. NHIF Reimbursements-Bramuel got me the latest numbers for December. Unfortunately, the number of patients with insurance cards dropped off. They treated 31 total patients and were reimbursed $472 USD for the month. With this, they were able to pay the rent since the main financial backers of the hospital, their organization members, were taking their children to school and not able to help with the December rent.

The community health team is responsible for marketing the availability of hospital services to NHIF card-carrying members. Once the hospital is able to secure the pieces of equipment that we requested in the Kitchen Table Charities proposal, they will be able to get inspected again and hopefully qualify for comprehensive coverage. Once they achieve that level, NHIF will add them to the list of facilities on their website, advertise in the local news media and NHIF offices throughout Kenya. This will obviously help them a great deal.

Bramuel is also busy working on a year-end report for the Ministry of Health. This has to be submitted by the end of the month.

3. Hospital Blog-Bramuel informed me today that back in December he created a blog for Arrow Web Hospital. The address to that blog is www.arrowwebhospital.blogspot.com. He said that friends of his who are not members of Nabuur asked him to create this blog so that they could help with local fundraising. Bramuel and I made a few changes to it this morning, but he would like to invite everyone to have a look and follow along with the updates there. Bramuel's vision for this blog is that it becomes a place to focus on the fundraising efforts of the hospital, much like you'd see with larger hospitals-usually they have an office devoted to fundraising. If anyone has thoughts or ideas on how he might develop this, please feel free to share them with him.

Blogspot is easy for him to update and free, so we will see how this develops.

4. Funding proposals-I will be contacting the African Diaspora Project and Kitchen Table Charities this week to follow up on the proposals that we've submitted to see if I can get a status update.

5. Mobile Phones

On December 22, we received the following message from Alison from AVIF:

"After a few phone calls, Josh Nesbit, working with Ken Banks and http://www.kiwanja.net have partnered with The Wireless Source - a cell phone recycling company based in the US. They've processed over 17 million handsets since 1995. Here is a quick description of the partnership:

With support from The Kiwanja Foundation, they will create a website showcasing clinics and organizations that have a need for mobile phones, in order to support healthcare delivery.

For example: Clinic X needs 100 phones. It's likely they'll receive 1,000 phone donations (or many more) via the website and concurrent outreach. If donated phones are worth, on average $10, there will be $10,000 available to buy fitting phones for that clinic (correct GSM band, necessary functionality, etc.).

I'm going to submit to the website:

- A quick description of Arrowweb

PLEASE ADVISE **
- What your cell phone needs are (#)

- If possible, ideas re: what the phones would enable (e.g. potential impact of communications)

As an example, the St. Gabriel's project in Malawi: The network allows the hospital to respond to requests for emergency medical care, track patients, record HIV and TB drug adherence, stay updated on patient status, mobilize remote communities for outreach testing, provide instant drug dosage/usage information, and connect HIV/AIDS support group members. Each phone pulls another 50 families into the communications network.

Josh says "If you have any questions, let me know! Very simply, my goal is to get resources (in this case, phones) to your organization."

Bramuel was able to estimate the number of phones the hospital could utilize and get that to Alison. As of 1/10/09, yesterday, Josh is in Malawi (www.mobilesinmalawi.blogspot.com) and will be traveling to Arrow Web Hospital around the end of January, start of February. They report that they are very excited to work with the hospital on this.

Many thanks to Alison for making contact and recognizing how much this would benefit the hospital.

Just as a reminder-I am still looking for some proposal writers. If anyone is interested, please let me know!

Have a great week!

Jennifer

Hi Jennifer

Thanks for the update - good to see things going well!

I would suggest putting a link to the blog on the main Arrow site, also one on the Arrow site to the blog. That way, everyone can easily follow everything, hopefully bringing in more supporters.

The thing with blogs is to update them regularly, with information that will be interesting to the audience, that does not need too much inside knowledge to understand.

Who are you hoping to submit proposals too? You will probably find that the existing proposal docs can be used as a base for that.

Mary

I would like to get proposals submitted for the bicycles. I really believe we can be successful in securing those for the community health team because the project is focused on healthcare-one of the main areas many of these organizations focus on supporting.

I don't think they will be too bad to write because there's a lot of existing information already about the hospital history, etc. We'd probably need to write some more up on the community health team and include some data about local health statistics. Since the other ones are focused on medical equipment I'm not sure they'd work completely, but I agree some of the basics are definitely already available.

Jennifer

I received the following message today in response to my inquiry about receipt of our proposal:

"I am pleased to confirm safe receipt of your proposal - which will be included in the next batch of applications to be considered by the Grants Committee in mid to late February."

Still no word from Africa Diaspora on receipt of that one.

Jennifer

we need support of student in secondary school within our village kiserian,kenya

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we are looking for wellwishers and donor or sponsors